O’s, Markakis Optimistic About Rekindled Talks

11:44am: Agent Jamie Murphy tells ESPN.com’s Jerry Crasnick that he “feel[s] like Dan [Duquette] does,” explaining that “there is still a lot of work to be done if we are going to reach a deal.” (Twitterlinks.) Though Murphy said both sides hope to work out a deal, he will continue to engage with other clubs in the meantime.

9:55am: Talks picked back up yesterday between the Orioles and free agent Nick Markakis, reports Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com, and there is renewed optimism that a four-year pact can be reached. The sides are discussing a deal that would pay Markakis between $10MM and $12MM a year, tweets Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports, who says it “should get done.”

The Orioles’ negotiations with the long-time Baltimore fixture had reportedly stalled, leaving Markakis prepared to test the open market at the GM Meetings. As Dan Connolly of the Baltimore Sun reported, the sides had been nearing a deal along the lines of what Passan suggests (four years, $10MM-$12MM) before the brakes were pumped.

MLBTR’s Steve Adams predicted a four-year, $48MM pact for the 31-year-old outfielder. As Adams explained, one’s view of Markakis’s defensive value goes a long way towards assessing his value. Though defensive metrics have generally pegged him as either a slightly above or slightly below average right fielder, there is a strong undercurrent of support for the idea that teams view him as a plus defender.

So are you willing to give up Gausman and Harvey for the right to pay CarGo upwards of $20MM to be on the disabled list? I’m not. He’s a negative WAR defender and his career OPS outside of Colorado is .750.

I’m not knocking Cargo–obviously a lot of talent there–but it’s a waste of time to dream about the Orioles trading for him. Nick is still more than serviceable (not “nostalgia”) and Gonzalez is way too expensive, both in what he’d cost in players traded and in salary. Just can’t see that happening.

I agree it doesn’t make sense & the O’s aren’t going to go for such nonsense.

I do have a quarrel with the metrics that call Nick & Cargo, both multiple Gold Glove winners, below average defenders. As much as I see value in metrics and a bigger role for them in the future, they clearly don’t have all the bugs ironed out in every regard and need to be fixed where needed.

As much as I’ve seen Markakis play right flawlessly, field balls out of the corner with an uncanny sense of the right angle to watch for and with a cannon of an arm that few runners are willing to test, I am absolutely unwilling to discuss with anyone who wants to trot out the absurd line that he can’t play out there. To all those folks I say, Get a new hobby or a new set of glasses.

Manny Ramirez didn’t make many errors in Fenway, but he also had about 30sq ft to cover. If while jogging to a ball it landed in front of him, it was a hit, not an error.

What I’m getting at is even if some stats say Markakis isn’t a good OF, watching him play RF tells another story. He’s not only a good fit for Baltimore, he’s better than some of his stats suggest. Likewise, Manny and now Cespedes (the Gold Glove nominee), are worse defenders than their stats suggest.

Why are you so fixated with put outs? Show me a guy that plays basically every game, and has a heavy fly ball pitching staff, and I’ll show you a guy that is going to have a ton of put outs.
The fact that Markakis has no errors is good. He has an amazing glove, always has. He also has a very good arm. That’s about it, but those two things are subservient to range. Range is something Markakis does not have, and i’d gladly take more errors if it meant he could cover more ground. It’s obvious watching him in the field, which is why the O’s have to shift him so far into the gap. They don’t have him on Adam Jones’ hip all game because the two just really like each other. And the stats back that up as well. The metrics weren’t created to trash Markakis. They are an objective analysis of what people are subjectively seeing.

I watch just about every O’s game, and Nick looks BAD out there. He struggles to get to balls, and doesn’t get to a lot of them that he should. I don’t need the metrics to tell me that, although the metrics do tell me that. He also has to cheat towards the gap and hope the foul line bails him out, because he struggles to cover ground. If you aren’t “seeing” that, I don’t know what to tell you, except if only there was some objective stats that could tell us which one of our “eyes’ are correct. Hmmm…

Forget CarGo! The guy has been a full-timer since 2010 and hasn’t played more than 135 games but once. If you trade for him you had better have an excellent 4th OF because he’ll have to become a starter for at least one, if not two, stretches during the season when CarGo hits the DL.

That $10-12M per year figure has me on the fence. Markakis is beloved by fans, but I have to question whether his production will be worth that. On the other hand it would be sad to see Nick in another uniform…

I guess I’ll be OK with it whichever way it turns out. It ain’t my money after all…

I really want the O’s to resign Markakis. He seems to have value to the org beyond the numbers he puts up every year, which are solid (if unspectacular). He’s incredibly durable, a well-liked team leader, and an above-average defensive right fielder who can hit for average and draws walks.

$10-$12M is really not too far out of the ballpark for a player like that. Plus, I really don’t want to see him go to the Cardinals.

No, it couldn’t be. You don’t play Markakis so far towards the gap every play because every batter has a tendency to hit the ball in the gap. You do it to hide his lack of range, thereby allowing him to cover more fair ground.

I might be wrong and he might be the greatest player of all time. But claiming that he plays so far to the gap due to the batters, and not his defensive limitations, just isn’t a very good argument. It’s a very “head in sand” argument.

I don’t think he’s the best of all time, but he appears to be good enough. Maybe my head’s in the sand. Seems to me that most right handed batters are going to hit the ball to the left side of the field more often than the slice a ball down the line, so it makes sense to me that he’d play off the line the majority of the time. But I don’t have the data in front of me on where Nick plays vs every batter, in every game, and where other RF’s would play in the same situation. I’m just going with what I see for the most part, and that’s Nick not making boneheaded plays, and occasionally making spectacular plays, and making all of the routine plays. He looks to me like a decent RF.

That might be true, but the last FA signings they have made have been for D. Young and Cruz, both horrible defenders. The last few deadline deals they have made have included De Aza and Morse, both below average to bad defenders. Kelly Johnson at BEST is about average. Hundley has never been much of a defensive catcher. There are very few acquisitions the O’s have made over the last few years that were defensive oriented. Probably Lough was the only one I can think of. This is the same organization that went with Brian Roberts over Flaherty.
And assuming for sake of argument the O’s do see something to Markakis’ defense that other people aren’t seeing, I’m not sure the O’s valuing one way or another should be the be all to end all. I mean, the O’s valued Ubaldo more than the rest of the league did last year, and we see how far that got them. At some point the consensus scouting reports and metrics should count for something. It can’t all be an appeal to authority, otherwise, there can be no reasonable discussion.

All those guys you mentioned as recent acquisitions being poor defenders were signed to short term deals and their role wasn’t as an everyday position player. I’m assuming that they want him to be their RF for the next 4 years, because he doesn’t really have another position to play. Maybe LF? Also, is the scouting consensus that he’s a below avg RF?

You’re overstating how “beloved” he is by the fans. It’s mostly Buck and Palmer and Thorne that are in love with him. Most of the fans coming to the Yard today don’t even know that Markakis was once a highly productive player, because they were watching the Ravens back then.

I was at 3 of 4 playoff games this year. Only time I heard a Markakis cheer was Game 1 against the Tigers. But Markakis was just one of many playoff cheers. It’s not like there is an O’Day cheer, or a JJ Hardy, or a Cruz, that continues throughout the regular season, which would be a better indicator of fan favorite.

Are you saying that Weeks and Romo were ineligible to receive a QO? If so, why were they ineligible?

As best I can tell, if you’re a FA to be, and if you have 6 years of ML service time, and you spent the entire current year with the same club, you are eligible to receive a QO (unless you have some weird clause in your contract that prohibits it, like the rallymonkey above said). That doesn’t mean that it makes sense for teams to extend QO’s to all players who are eligible for them.